The biggest international news story from Indonesia, since the fall of the Suharto regime, in 1998, was the Bali bombing four years later. It was mainly reported as a ‘bolt from the blue’
- the work of ‘Muslim fanatics’, echoing the response to the previous year’s 9/11 attacks in being portrayed, in most media, as ‘a pure spasm of apocalyptic irrationality’.
This pattern of reporting was of a piece with occasional coverage, in the intervening period, of regional conflicts which pitted members of different religions or ethnic groups against each other.
In the discussion held in September 2001, this reporting was criticised for ‘essentialising’ such conflicts, leading us - or leaving us - to interpret them as the expression of atavistic hatreds, welling up from within. An interpretation typical of Orientalism.
Read an edited transcript of the 2001 discussion
The alternative was to ‘get a bit more sociological’, in the words of one participant, and include some material to suggest how economic and social factors prepare the ground for conflict and violence.
Had this advice been heeded, it would have offered a more informative background against which to cover the Bali bomb itself.
Read more about connections between regional conflicts and the Bali bomb
It would also have created space for a fuller discussion about how to respond to this violent incident, since a wide range of initiatives to ameliorate, change and resolve conflict issues across Indonesia could have been seen as relevant to the Bali bomb itself.
Read about a peace strategy for Indonesia after the Bali bomb
The Bali bomb placed a premium on the response by Indonesia’s own media, and what journalists there call Jurnalisme Damai, or Peace Journalism.
Learn about a media
strategy to help prevent violence in Indonesia
Indonesia is the one place, above all, where Peace Journalism has flourished under that name.
Find out what the case for Peace Journalism is in Indonesia
RtW directors Jake Lynch and Annabel McGoldrick have worked, along with many others, to help develop Jurnalisme Damai, leading workshops and field trips with reporters from some of the country’s leading news organisations. One was to the conflict zone of Poso, in central Sulawesi, where local Muslims and Christians have experienced several years of violence.
Read about reporting from Poso
The other was to Manado, in north Sulawesi, which has managed to avoid the ‘domino effect’ of regional conflicts disfiguring Indonesia in the years following the fall of the New Order. How come?
Learn about Manado, the Peaceful City, and the challenges of reporting from there
Read the introduction to a collection of Peace Journalism articles by Indonesian journalists reporting from Manado